The Giants, as you may have noticed, discard back-of-the-40-man-roster players like confetti, or trash, or jetsam. Confetrasham, as it’s commonly known.
I thought it would be fun to go through all of the guys they’ve lost since the offseason started and find out how they’re doing. Who’s actually good? Who’s actually bad? Who’s Corey Oswalt?
That’s a serious question. There was a guy in the Giants organization named Corey Oswalt and now there isn’t. Apparently he was traded for cash. Anyway, you’ll hear much more about Corey Oswalt later, so stay tuned for that!
Anyway, for this exercise I’m going to run down every player I find on the Transactions page who left the organization since the end of the 2021 season, briefly go over their stats, and then maybe make a comment, if I have something to say about them. Again, watch out for that riveting Corey Oswalt content!
We’ll start out with…
No information available
Michael Papierski
They DFA’d him 5 days ago! That’s too soon for him to have even gone to another team, much less to have results with that other team that a person could then judge.
Doing well
Michael Plassmeyer — 10.2 IP, 4 R (2 ER), 11 K, 3 BB, 1.69 ERA for the Lehigh Valley IronPigs
Kevin Padlo — .278/.350/.444 in 20 PAs for the Tacoma Rainiers
Prelander Berroa — 28.2 IP, 8 R (7 ER), 42 K, 17 BB, 2.20 ERA for the Everett AquaSox
Mauricio Dubon — .256/.318/.410 in 45 PAs for the Houston Astros
Hunter Harvey — 2 scoreless innings for the Rochester Red Wings, 4 scoreless innings for the Washington Nationals
Caleb Baragar — 20 IP, 8 R (6 ER), 22 K, 5 BB, 2.70 ERA for the Reno Aces
For a few of these guys (Plassmeyer, Padlo, and Harvey, the third best law firm in Minor League Baseball), the sample size is so small that the actual results are meaningless. Dubon is pretty close to that level too, while Berroa and Baragar have put together nice performances that have lasted for pretty much the whole season. Do the Giants regret losing either of them? Well, maybe they could have worked the 40-man to keep Baragar around, but once the Mariners had their eye on Berroa, well, what could the Giants do? They knew that the one man who could save their season was definitely Donovan Walton, and they’d pay any price to get him.
Doing fine
Jaylin Davis — .300/.361/.525 in 133 PAs for the Worcester Red Sox, 2 singles in 4 PAs for the Boston Red Sox
Will Toffey — .231/.377/.415 in 165 PAs for the Lehigh Valley IronPigs
Corey Oswalt — 17.2 IP, 9 ER, 9 K, 7 BB, 4.58 ERA for the Lehigh Valley IronPigs
Davis is having an objectively good season in AAA, but that’s what he does. His ground ball rate is still too high, but right now he looks like a AAAA player.
Toffey, who the Giants acquired for minor league infield depth last year, is showing nice secondary skills, with solid walk rates and power, despite a low average.
Corey Oswalt is an American professional baseball pitcher in the Philadelphia Phillies organization.
Doing badly
Stuart Fairchild — .176/.176/.529 in 17 PAs for the AAA Louisville Bats
Luke Williams — .200/.286/.240 in 28 PAs for the Marlins, also hit .222/.462/.556 in 13 PAs for the Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp
Cory Abbott — 13 IP, 13 ER, 18 K, 9 BB, 9.00 ERA for the Rochester Red Wings, also pitched a scoreless outing for the Nationals
Alex Blandino — .169/.343/.286 in 99 PAs for the Tacoma Rainiers
Mike Ford — .172/.368/.207 in 38 PAs for the Seattle Mariners, then DFA’d, then .000/.353/.000 in 17 PAs for the Gwinnett Stripers
Carlos Martinez — 4.1 extremely bad innings for the Worcester Red Sox, followed by an 80-game suspension for PEDs
Jose Godoy — .212/.287/.318 in 94 PAs for the St. Paul Saints, 0-for-3 with 2 walks for the Minnesota Twins
Jay Jackson — 60-day IL with a right lat strain
Alex Dickerson — .121/.194/.212 in 36 PAs for the Atlanta Braves, .226/.252/.414 in 139 PAs for the Gwinnett Stripers
The Giants are probably not losing sleep over anyone on this list, other than maybe Blandino, who they traded for Stuart Fairchild, who then was DFA’d shortly thereafter. If I were Farhan Zaidi, that would irritate me a bit. We lost this one bit of inventory? For what???
Otherwise, you have minor leaguers who weren’t cutting it with the Giants, offseason waiver-claim-and-DFA guys, and a couple big leaguers from last year who went to the Braves and couldn’t make it work. Sorry about your lat strain, Jay! Get better soon! And sorry that you’re bad now, Alex! Good luck finding your stroke in Gwinnett!
This list, right here, is the essence of the Farhan Giants. This is how they turn up one (1) Luis Gonzalez: by turning the roster over again and again until they find the one little nugget of gold. In this metaphor, gold is found by farmers in their topsoil, I guess? Look, I don’t know either.
But the Giants are going to give up on a lot of guys, and most of them will prove the team right. That’s just how numbers work. One or two will make them regret it, though. Tom Murphy, for example, has done a very nice job as a backup catcher for the Mariners since he was a Giant for four days in 2019. Caleb Baragar might be next in that line, or he might regress. Or he might do a third thing. Let’s keep our options open here.
The point is, boy, the Giants have churned through an awful lot of players this season. Most of them you’ll never think about again. For example, what’s the name of the guy who I made a big deal about in the third paragraph of the intro?
It was Corey, by the way. Corey…something. Maybe next time you’ll remember it.